


Trigger Finger

by burymeinziam



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depressed Zayn, M/M, Minor Violence, Suicidal Thoughts, sad shit i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 20:19:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1524257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burymeinziam/pseuds/burymeinziam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He changed something.<br/>Took something away.<br/>Made a dent.</p><p>Zayn never thought he was that special, but apparently to Liam he kind of was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trigger Finger

One day his life is clear as glass. Nothing is hard. Nobody wishes he were dead and then…

And then something just sort of happens and his whole life is turned inside out.

Nobody had ever touched him before like he did.

Fingers tracing over bones jutting out beneath inked up skin. A shirt pulled over a chest, slow and nervous and shy. Clothes ending up on the floor like dead bodies that had been eaten away by birds for so long that only the hollow interiors of abandoned shirts and shoes were left. Lips burning stains unlike the tattoos that littered his naked chest and bare arms. Windows fogged up and blurred from all the heat they’d produced.

It’s not his fault. It had never been his idea. Nobody asks for something like this.

 

 

He can’t stop walking. He doesn’t even know if he’s going in the right direction, just that if he stops he’ll shatter into a million pieces of jagged, broken glass cutting open the earth.

Just a mess of blood and bone and muscle; ripped up cartilage that nobody would even bother with trying to recognize.

Dirt beneath his feet, crickets yelling. Seeds fall from the sky getting stepped on and trampled over by people. Stomped into the dirty until trees sprout from the ground, growing everywhere and towering above the whole entire world for everyone to see.

Like a rock star.

Seeds planted by God.

People planted by God?

When you’re this far out into the middle of nowhere all you hear is the wind whispering secrets into your ear.

Nothing else matters.

 

 

Where he lives now makes him feel as though he’s gone colorblind. Cement blankets drape across the entire universe overhead, covering up the sun. It’s kind of like he’s looking down, but he’s right in the middle of it. Leaves on bare trees die without the sun, shriveling into ashy-brown paper. Dead.

Dead paper leaves fall to the ground, covering up bright green grass.

Seeds planted by God. People planted by God.

Green grass suffocating beneath the weight of all the dead, paper leaves and it’s sort of like a metaphor because that boy with the hands and the lips and eyes had been so beautiful.

And maybe he had been too. Once.

Dirt, sticks, leaves, rocks underneath his shoes. Pebbles poking up and into the bottom of his feet through the tear in the sole.

Tear in the soul.

(and maybe that’s a metaphor, too)

He’s getting somewhere.

 

 

He can’t tell anyone how it feels. The feeling of having his ribcage torn open, heart yanked out but still attached by veins; human electrical wires. Being forced to see his own heart pumping outside of his body, forced to watch his whole life beating away like thump, thump, thump. Lub dub dub.

He can’t tell anyone because nobody would even care to listen. Everyone already wishes he’d died before anything could happen anyway.

Because he’s sorry.

Because no matter how hard he tries he can’t stop these thoughts from breaking into his mind. Because he can’t filter what he thinks. Because nobody plans on ending up on some grimy stage, white lights streaming down on your face while you wail into a microphone. Nobody plans on a thousand faces clawing into your brain. Nobody plans on it.

Because they’d never allowed him to call back. Because he’d never meant to hurt anyone on purpose; not in a million years.

Because, because, because.

Because he’s sorry. 

 

 

Something sharp stabbing into the bottom of his foot. A pebble stuck inside his shoe. His feet hurt from walking, but it feels like his brain is tuned into a lost radio station; static blurring voices in the background. The most terrible sound in the world and he’s not stopping until he figures it all out.

Metal in his pocket. If he pauses, stops even for a second. He can feel it on his fingertips, heavy and cold. He can feel it and the second he does, he knows he has to get going again. Feet moving, stomping into the dead, brown paper leaves. The faster he walks, the heavier it feels, bumping up against his leg. If he stops walking, he can feel it in his palm, the handle, the indents of its shape, the barrel.

If he stops walking, someone’s going to get killed.

A heart only attached by arteries and veins; hanging outside an empty, hollow, chest looking you right in the eyes and _thump, thump, thump._

 

 

Dead, naked trees reach out a thousand witch-claw arms toward the sky for what feels like miles and hours instead of seconds and feet back when everything felt so much closer and he can see the gate, the long winding driveway, the broken down Cadillac and then that giant, haunted house.

It’s the place he lives in. The way it looks now though, inhabited by ghosts, whispers like the wind about how pretty it used to be. A big home, three floors, a hundred bedrooms and a thousand places to get lost. Wallpaper from a million years ago when a smile had been so easy, peeling off the walls and falling to the floor like shriveled up flower petals. Grime growing in place of the absent wallpaper, in the cracks in the ceiling, in the kitchen sink.

Grime eating away at the house, crumbling it away into dust. Dust billowing in the wind burying the people. The furniture. Trophies.

Dead, brown, paper leaves hiding the bright green grass.

Seeds planted by God. (Or was it people?) Whatever.

A hundred million naked trees stripped of their dead or dying brown leaves tangled all around this haunted house. A whole entire forest hiding everything he’s ever been ashamed of. Or making it more apparent. Hiding in plain sight.

You never know what you’re looking for until it’s staring you right in the face.

Shoes thumping against hardwood floor, wallpaper curling up into ugly rose petals in every possible direction. Bugs and the hook-like hands of the monsters hiding under his three-year-old self’s bed; long, sharp, cutting finger nails poking up through the cracks in the wood floor (he wonders if he should step on one, see if he’ll feel the blood oozing into his socks). Ghost faces fading in and out of the dirty, dust-filled windows.

Welcome home. Welcome home.

We missed you.

Yeah, right.

 

 

His feet on the stairwell. Climbing. His hands on the railing, fingers running over the dents in the wood, drawing over dips and divots that feel like the curvatures of bones. A spine.

Metal in his pocket. He could hurt somebody if he wanted to.

 

 

It’s impossible to forget someone after you’ve fucked them.

You can do anything else with them. Meet them, go to the movies, eat dinner. Hold hands. Kiss. You could do all of those things and a million and one things that aren’t those things at all and still forget them at the end of the day.

Fucking is different.

You fuck someone and they stay with you. They carve out a little tally mark into your rib cage. Their face haunts you in your dreams.

A curved back, vertebrae jutting out and he traces his fingers over his spine. The skin on the back of his neck, the birthmark just below his jaw. He runs his fingers behind his ears, but he never squirms or hides away. Never dances or shivers.

Just smiles.

Because, because, because, because…

 

 

(He never meant to leave him behind)

 

 

Feet on the stairwell.

Hands on the dying, rose petal wallpaper and it feels like his skin.

 

  
People will hate anything that they don’t fully understand.

 

 

His smile didn’t look like a smile at first. It didn’t really look like a frown either. It was something in between. Like limbo. No. It was just something invisible. A secret sort of happiness that only he could see and know.

A party after a show. Somebody’s house somewhere. The bathroom. It was always the bathroom.

 

 

Once upon a time there was a boy who didn’t fit in anywhere. Even after he left high school, even before graduating and escaping every terrifying monster face that had terrified him since middle school. Even after he went on to pick up a guitar and actually do something with it, the boy didn’t fit in anywhere. He wandered around aimlessly through a maze of fake friends, never fitting in to any single group of people. When he was in school he always escaped to the library, went to the nurse’s office in order to get out of gym.

Now, when things were different, he escaped into bathrooms.

Ass on the toilet seat, staring into the wall, smoke foaming up from a cigarette between his fingers when the door opens. He can feel the cigarette startle in his hand, head jerking up like a chicken and then there’s a face in the doorway and his stomach shoots up into his throat.

“Oh – Jesus” And Zayn doesn’t really believe in God – or his son – but whatever. “I didn’t know anyone was in here.”

He’d never been able to speak to anyone beautiful. Or smart. Or worth something. Whenever he saw someone who appeared to be something straight out of a magazine, or one of those sculptures they keep locked away in fancy museums, he closed himself off even further than he did on normal occasions. So intimidated that he just curled himself up into a ball and hid out in a corner until the moment passed.

But he wouldn’t go away. His head lolled down, looking at his feet for a moment before his eyes inched back upward, forcing contact, pinning him right there to the toilet.

“Are you okay?”

Zayn doesn’t know how to tell anymore if he was drunk. This was a hundred thousand centuries ago. He just can’t remember anymore.

He just knows that most people would stop breathing when they were around him like they were afraid to inhale whatever disease he was carrying. Like he must have looked like something dead. It was enough for him to stop though, and still be hanging around. Concerned or something.

Still breathing.

He stepped inside. Got even closer like he didn’t know who Zayn was. Like he didn’t know that he was the worst person alive.

Or like he did know. But he didn’t care.

“I saw you downstairs. You looked… lonely.”

Eyes locked. Pinning him down. Reeling him in.

“Why are you in here anyway?”

His voice is soft, almost a whisper.

Voices. Voices of people he knew. People who hate him.

They follow him around in his dreams at night. Voices just over his shoulder whispering things they’ve whispered a million times before. When he walks around in his dreams, his voice is behind him, always asking if everything is okay. And then he appears and he’s more than just a voice. He puts a hand on his shoulder, makes him stop walking, turns him around, and then he’s saying

“Are you okay…? I like telling stories. Let me tell you something. It might make you feel better.”

He never frowned. Just gave off this half-smile like he knew something Zayn didn’t. He always knew things Zayn didn’t. Strange beautiful things inside of his head and whenever Zayn tried to ask what was on his mind he never really answered. Just focused brown eyes on Zayn’s, staring into his brain like he could read all of his thoughts.

Half-smiling.

 

 

When a guitar drops to the floor, it doesn’t break. Just creates the worst sound in the world.

This hollow, wooden interior thrumming with the noise of impact; a sound of something breaking, but not really breaking. Then the strings vibrate, pitching out notes that create no melody at all, but a drone. The sound of a dying animal or a human or…

It’s not his fault.

Nobody believes him, but it’s not. He said a lot of stupid things about wanting to be successful. Wanting be somebody beautiful so he could get out of the dead ghost town that he was born into. He said a lot of stupid shit, but he swears he never actually meant it.

Because he said a lot of stupid things, but Liam never stopped him. Just stared and listened while Zayn went on and on because somehow Liam knew that nobody had ever truly listened to what Zayn had to say.

 

 

When somebody kisses you for the first time you force yourself to cherish it. It comes out of nowhere.

Liam staring at him with that half-smile, brown eyes burning holes into his brain reading all of Zayn’s thoughts, his ideas. The desires and the fears he kept hidden away because they were too dark and morbid and stupid for anyone else to see. Listening to everything he’s saying and never interrupting because he knows that nobody has ever actually listened before.

And then when Zayn is finally done talking, through with telling Liam all about his whole stupid life, Liam blinks and murmurs

“You’re ideas aren’t stupid. They’re different.”

And then he stares into Zayn’s brain, looks into his past. Leans forward. Slowly. Inch by inch and touches their lips together and Zayn will never forget any part of it.

You never forget all the wonderful things in your childhood that it suddenly reminds you of. What it tastes like, and then you realize how special it is and how you can never lose it.

So when they finally leave, you take it all off of your lips more careful than anything you’ve ever removed from yourself because it truly is the most delicate thing you’ve ever touched. And you store it inside that shoebox you keep all of his gifts inside of so you can take it out every night before you go to sleep and stare at it, smiling secretly to yourself like it’s a piece of stardust that melted down from the sky just for you to keep.

Liam kissed him once and Zayn kept it. He kissed Zayn for a second time and it led to something. He sat across from him and touched his hand to Zayn’s knee. Slid it up to his thigh. Clothes fell off like the bodies that stood inside of them had suddenly disappeared into thin air and then suddenly Zayn had a tally mark.

His fingers touched his skin and every hair on Zayn’s body raised up. His fingertips traced over everything, examined it all with a look on his face like Zayn was this amazing fossil Liam had discovered out in the desert. Made Zayn’s clothes fall to the floor before he made the space between them become smaller and smaller and smaller until there was no space at all.

He changed something.

Took something away.

Made a dent.

Naked skin, and Zayn wanted to draw him.  

 

 

Metal in his pocket. The sense of power that rushes through his veins like drugs shooting through a needle is overwhelming. Overpowering to the point that he has to push it away. Set it down somewhere distant. Facing away from him. Facing the wall.

Because because because… because Zayn doesn’t care if he wants to die.

He can’t talk about it. Can’t describe it anyways. Not in a way that anyone else would really understand. In your head a lot of fucked up shit can happen. Brown eyes, brown hair, a half-smile that Zayn can’t stop seeing whenever he closes his eyes.

He doesn’t know what happened. Something changed beneath his skin and made his heart flutter every time he saw that subtle quirk of the lips. Made him hear Liam’s voice from over his shoulder in his sleep whispering stories about this boy who once met this other boy and even though the second boy was quiet and weird and looked a little off, he still gave off this light that attracted the first boy to him so much that he never wanted to leave.

Zayn never thought he was that special, but apparently to Liam he kind of was.

But he could never speak this out loud so he tried to do it on paper. Scrawling out lyrics to songs and making up poems and notes and letters. Wrote everything out like a deaf-mute instead of talking.

And when Liam heard it he convinced Zayn to pick up a guitar and sing, just to be able to hear his voice once in a while. And when he finally heard his voice he was so in awe of it that he wanted – no, needed – to hear it all the time.

Singing poetry and letters and words that he could never find the nerve to speak in plain language.

And that’s how they lived with each other. Zayn wrote and sang and sometimes Liam sang with him and they created lyrics together. Filled up journals with songs that no one else was ever allowed to hear but them because it was their own special thing that they kept safely inside their shoeboxes.

 

 

If that was falling in love that Zayn felt underneath his skin, he’d have no way of knowing. Nobody ever told him how it felt. Nobody ever told him anything.

Nobody ever plans on this. Or on anything, really. They never expect it to happen. To make it big. To actually go somewhere.

 

 

It caught him off guard. Nobody told him beforehand that this was what was supposed to happen. He picks up a guitar and gets on a bus and then suddenly he’s traveling across the world screaming into the faces of a million strangers. Bleeding his feelings out into a sea of people he’s never met.

Headlines pop up and he’s given awards. He fills more journals with the fucked up words in his head only once they’re sung to a million faces he’ll probably never see again they kind of lose their meaning. Dead metaphors. Wasted symbolism. Brown, paper leaves crunching beneath his feet.

Seeds or people or words or what-the-fuck-ever planted by God.

If he were to be honest with everyone, Zayn would tell them he wants to go home. But then again, that probably wouldn’t mean anything either.

He’s on top of the world though. He has so much power over those millions of eyes staring back at him, but he wants to go home. Stage lights burning into his eyes, burning holes into his skin and Zayn just wants to go home.

The saddest part is, however, that you eventually get used to it.

You go to a different city every night. A different hotel room becoming your home until eventually you forget what your real home even looks like. Where it used to be. If it was ever really there in the first place.

There are too many faces to remember. A thousand eyes looking up at you, crowding up your memory until the old faces have to get erased in order to make room.

 

  
Zayn doesn’t want anyone to believe him. Not really. He says things that he knows he doesn’t mean.

 

  
When the boy was little he used to wear rocket ship pajamas and he had a stupid haircut and baby fat. He watched the television channels that his mother told him not to look at. The ones that flashed violent images and drugs and women wearing sexy lingerie. And then there were the music videos. The poetry he’d never heard before. And he loved it so much that he felt this need to sit in front of the television every morning watching it all flash before him. People on screen telling stories about sex and suicide and love or a complex combination of all three. He decided after that that he wanted to do it to. Be some sort of rock star singing on the television.

Because, because, because…

Because it’s so fucking dumb and he knows it. Because there’s nobody on this earth anymore who doesn’t hate him.

Because he doesn’t want this anymore.

Because eventually your brain becomes so scrambled with the faces and the smiles and the screams of all the people who know you, but have also never met you and their words appear on the covers of magazines and people will start talking about the way you dress and act and eventually you sort of just forget who you are.

 

 

His name is Zayn Malik.

His name is Faggot.

His name is Lie.

His name is Zero.

 

 

Before the boy picked up a guitar and got noticed that other boy whispered a story to help him fall asleep at night.

It was about a cat who was owned by this perfect family with a mom and a dada and this one little girl. Only the cat got bored with that life after a while so it went out looking for some sort of an adventure. It decided to run away and it wandered the streets until it met another cat and then suddenly that first cat had a tally mark. Eventually the cat went home and a little while it had a bunch of kittens and that perfect little girl from the perfect family begged her mom and dad to keep them all, but that curious cat and all of her curious little kittens sort of tainted the perfection that mom and dad were so set on keeping up so they kicked the cats out completely.

They took all the kittens and stuck them in this cardboard box and left it outside of a grocery store, offering them up for free. Almost every cat got taken because they were all beautiful and clean and cute and who doesn’t want a kitten.

Except for one. One of them looked all wrong because one of its tail was crooked and it was blind in one eye and it limped a little bit because the muscles in one of its back legs didn’t develop just right. That cat got left behind in that cardboard box since nobody wanted a kitten that looked so ugly.

Well, almost nobody.

It stayed in that box right up until one particular kid came along and took it in. This little boy found it and loved it and thought it was beautiful because it was so ugly and he loved that cat up until the day it died because nobody else would.

Zayn is that cat.

He’s the fucked up cat that Liam still loved.

 

  
It’s never fun, but it’s all he can think about. Shows. Gigs. Arenas. Guitars attached to amps plugged into the walls of stages that he climbs around on, tripping over wires and falling flat on his face, still sticking the microphone up to his lips desperate to get the words out of his head and into the air so they can disappear. So he never has to think about them or hear them or say them ever again because once they leave his mouth and enter the ears and the minds of all those empty faces they don’t really mean much of anything.

Numbers. Big math-class-sized numbers.

Three thousand.

Ninety thousand.

Two million albums sold.

It’s hard to focus on anything else because if he does the thousands of eyes staring into his skull come after him. Use their words as weapons because words always end up hurting people.

“You don’t care about the music”

“Phony”

“Sellout”

Sometimes he dreams of going home. Stuck on the bus watching the world fly by at seventy miles an hour out the window and he dozes off and dreams of waking up back in his apartment. Journals littering the floor and then he actually wakes up and he’s on a stage sweating.

 

 

It’s not his fault. He swears he tried to call back.

 

 

A letter handed to him one day before a show written on lined paper and ripped out of a notebook. Another story. Because he said he’d read somewhere in some magazine that the drummer did an interview with that Zayn had been having troubles with getting to sleep at night.

Liam reads about him now.

Not to him, but about him.  

 

 

One day the boy went outside with his guitar and a head filled with songs he’d heard on the radio. He went out onto the street and left the case open for people to drop change into while he played for anyone who was passing by. Anyone willing to listen. Eventually someone noticed that underneath all that quietness, talent was just itching to be noticed.

That someone who noticed was a drummer in a band who heard that boy singing from afar and had to follow the sound of that voice and figure out who was producing it. Because it was exactly what he had been looking for.

The boy didn’t know how to react at first, but he followed the drummer anyways to their garage where he showed them how he could say so much but only when he was singing and how beautiful that really was.

And then they formed a band that everyone liked.

And eventually that boy became famous and he was known all around the world and thousands of people he’d never met before suddenly knew who he was. And the band traveled everywhere singing and playing to make everyone happy until the boy lost sight of what used to make him happy.

And eventually he stopped writing songs about all the strange and fantastic things he used to be able to think of when he’d had that other boy by his side and the songs became boring. The boy became so focused on what other people thought that he forgot about everything else back home. He forgot his own name and what that meant and the other boy started to wonder where he’d gone; wondered if he was still filling up his journals. He found it hard to write him letters because the first boy was always moving around from place to place with no real address.

And then when he finally did get a letter to the right place he really only had one question: Did they not talk anymore because Zayn hated Liam just as much as Liam hated who Zayn had become?

 

The handwriting was scraggly. It took Zayn a while to figure out who it was that had written the letter because even the return address was almost illegible.

And then something happened. Something fell down inside of him and the contents of his stomach felt as though they were rising up in his throat. The dent Liam had made in his ribcage started to hurt, make his other ribs hurt until his chest was just this giant ball of pain.

He didn’t even recognize his fucking handwriting.

 

 

That’s what happens when you fuck someone. The dent they make in you doesn’t hurt until it has to.

  
  
This house is not a home. Zayn will inhabit it and breathe and sleep and scream and dream about fucking and touching and keeping kisses in safe places in this house, but he does not live here anymore.

 

  
An interviewer once stuffed a microphone in his face demanding to know his major influences. And Zayn was lost. Scatterbrained from the chaos of everything that had ever happened to him since the day he was born and he couldn’t focus. Couldn’t remember. So he blurted out a band that he’d heard some other band talking about on MTV a few days ago.

“Um, The Beatles.

I guess.

I don’t know.”

And then he walked away and all the voices came back to his head and there was Liam’s in the back of his mind singing all the poetry that he’d written onto those crumpled journal pages. Then realizing what a terrible mistake he’d made and wishing more than anything that he could go back and change his answer. Praying that Liam never picked up that magazine and read that interview and saw that Zayn had never even thought to mention his name. Not even once.

He needed a phone.

To apologize.

He needed to make a phone call, he’d told them.

“I need to talk to someone.”

He needs to make a phone call. He’s telling anyone who will listen.

His manager. The drummer. The bassist.

He needs to talk to somebody. He needs to talk to them before they hate him forever just like the rest of the world.

And the backstage guy says “We’re on in a minute. You don’t’ have time to make a fuckin’ call.”

And Zayn can’t stop picturing blood. Splattered. All over the place. All over people’s faces staining. Staining their clothes. Dripping from their hair.

 

 

When a dog becomes angry it bites and it snarls and it barks to tell others to just leave it the fuck alone.

When a child becomes angry it cries and it throws toys at the walls and demands that things be fair.

When an adult becomes angry, they suppress it and maybe go to therapy.

Zayn doesn’t know what he is.

 

 

A million faces light up an arena when the lights were finally rigged. A hundred million pairs of ripped jeans and strange haircuts. Homemade T-shirts and faces of people who had lost themselves years before, but would probably never realize it.

Something building in his chest. The dent in his ribcage burning a hole through his chest. A building, expanding ball of pain in his chest suddenly exploding outward, spreading out in all directions. Prickling right into his fingertips.

Fifty million screams in his ears. Stage lights blinding down on him. There’s a guitar in his hands. He’s using all his strength to swing it around but the screams are only amplified. They think it’s all a part of the show.

He keeps swinging and swinging until his arms feel as though they’re about to fall off and then he lets go.

A guitar flying through the air, chord snaking back to the amp ripped out. It lands somewhere on stage, a giant terrible sound of a guitar being dropped, and the screams just keep going. The music keeps going. A drummer and a bassist give him strange looks. Start moving their mouths to mime messages Zayn doesn’t care to understand.

He finds the guitar on stage. Pain in his fingertips, head exploding. Bits of his skill and brains all over the place and he doesn’t even realize he’s screaming until his throat gives in.

So many screaming voices coming from all different directions. Raking the inside of his head.

Because, because, because…

Shut the fuck up.

He finds the guitar and tosses it again only looking at it long enough to see that the strings are broken and one of the knobs is halfway off. He throws it. Somewhere. Zayn doesn’t know where because he can’t really see anymore. Splotches of purple worm around the shell of his vision, out the corners of his eyes. A headache suddenly starting in the front of his skull and nearly blinding him.

Shouts from the security guards. If he throws something in the wrong direction he could hurt someone in the audience. He could kill someone.

“Cut it out.”

And Zayn just wants to go home.

He forgot his handwriting and his childhood address. Nobody else had loved the cat except for Liam, but the cat had gone and left that behind and Zayn had forgotten his handwriting.

“Don’t you understand that?”

He got dragged out at one point. Blood running down his arms and a million screams scraping and clawing at the insides of his brain.

He is not a star. He’s nothing special. Not really. Not anymore.

 

 

This paper house he lives in is blowing away in the wind.

 

 

He’s never felt so alone in his entire life. Metal on the side table. Metal in his fingers, resting on his sweaty palms. Barrel up against his skull.

He finds a pen. Somehow. He doesn’t remember looking for one, but he finds it somewhere. He turns the paper out and scribbles a few words on the back of it.

He scribbles that he’s terrified, so fucking terrified of Liam hating him just as much as everyone else does.

He scribbles that he would find every goddamned letter that he never received.

He scribbles a number.

_Find me._

The only thing the sound of the phone ringing does is emphasize how empty everything really is. The ringing makes an echo that travels slowly through the halls. Makes the dust that’s been collecting on everything all off and sprinkle to the ground.

Barrel in his mouth. On his tongue. Metal tasting of car door handles or bicycle tire frames or burnt tin foil.

He thinks. Pull the trigger.

Pull the trigger and a bullet will shoot through his skull at six hundred miles an hour.

He thinks. Pull the trigger.

Pull the trigger and his head will explode and he wonders whether or not he’d be able to feel it. Even for a second.

He thinks. Pull the trigger.

Phony. Sellout. And he wonders if Holden Caulfield had met him right now, in this very moment, if he would call him a phony too.

Every time the phone rings the shrill, screaming noise makes Zayn jump. Makes his fingers move on the trigger. Makes him flinch. Makes him think he’ll pull the trigger first.

He thinks. Pull the trigger.

Don’t be a coward too.

 

 

He never picks up the phone. It’s usually just someone calling asking if he’ll fuck them. If they can be another tally mark in his ribs. If Zayn would be willing to mark them up as well. It’s people calling and asking questions about his personal life. People calling and yelling and complaining about things Zayn never would have thought would matter. People calling. In general.

But he picks it up this once just so he can have an excuse to take the barrel off of his tongue.

And then.

“Zayn?”

A voice in the speakers calling his name and Zayn can feel the barrel slide up the side of his cheek. Up to the side of his head. Pressing against his brains and Zayn wonders if he’d feel it then.

“Zayn?”

When he closes his eyes his vision blurs. Barrel against the side of his head and his heart beats like a jack rabbit.

“Okay. Whatever.” Voice in the speaker and Zayn really wants to know if he’d feel it. “I don’t know what the hell your deal is, you know… you never pick up your phone and then when you do you can’t even fuckin’ say hello?”

 

 

Everything dies eventually. Birds. Dogs. Bugs. Fucked up cats with crooked tails and blind eyes.

Everything goes at some point.

Zayn just wanted somebody to listen because…

Because, because, because…

Liam actually did. He stayed awake at night right next to Zayn when nightmares used to rip him from sleep. Stayed awake next to him while he stared up at the ceiling wishing there wasn’t any ceiling at all so they could see the stars and collect the ones that came raining down on top of them.

And

 

 

“Dude, I know you’re there. I can hear you breathing.”

 

 

And Zayn wishes he wasn’t.

Because he can’t get rid of this pain in his chest.

Can’t get rid of this lump in his throat

Or the puddles in his eyes.

Because he’s not a rock star.

He’s just some stupid cat lying in a box that nobody wants to take home.

Because, because, because…

 

 

“Look, I just need an answer. Are you going to do this tour or not? We’re ready, man. Do you get me? Do you hear what I’m saying? We’re ready, and all we need is a yes or a no from you.”

But, you see, Zayn has forgotten his name.

Twenty million years ago he can remember journals and songs and two boys and a thousand stories.

But not his own name. Not his own face.

A sigh on the other end of the phone line.

“This situation is bad enough. All the fucking equipment you broke… you know how much that shit cost us? I got another guy on here—”

Voices. Voices in the background. Voices over his shoulder asking questions and demanding answers and Zayn can’t remember his own name.

“We just need a yes or a no.”

 

 

They never should have brought him to that fucking garage. Never should have made him tag along.

 

 

In this empty house everything echoes. The phone dropping to the floor. The front door being knocked on. Booms fade in and out of every room.

He’s not opening the door though. Not letting himself get sucked into the same game all over again to die and shrivel up into a dead papery body like the fucking wallpaper in this ugly fucking house.

 

 

He can’t go to sleep. There aren’t any stars to count and Zayn will be awake for hours.

 

 

Barrel against his skull.

A shoebox full of gifts and first kisses and tally marks and he thinks he lost it somewhere he’ll never find it.

Barrel against his skull and Zayn really hopes he’ll feel it.

 

 

“Is anyone here?”

 

 

He hasn’t counted all the stars in the universe yet and he hasn’t said he’s sorry a million times over until he passes out. He’s lost his shoebox and he’s lost the boy.

Barrel against his skull and Zayn wants the feel it, but he’s not sure that he’s ready.

There are so many things that he still needs to do.

 

 

Feet on the stairwell.

 

 

The house is falling apart underneath the weight of its hideous appearance. The wallpaper is curling up, dying and crumbling into the dust in the wind. Dust in Zayn’s eyelashes.

Because, because, because…

 

 

“Zayn?”

 

 

He’s here.

 

 

Barrel against his skull and it suddenly feels a hundred times heavier in his hand. Zayn’s eyelashes are wet and weighted down with water and he can barely keep his head up.

Brown hair and even browner eyes and Liam is tall in the doorway, crumpled letter still scrunched in his palm.

Zayn had written down his address like he wrote down lottery numbers: Not expecting to win. Not expecting Liam to ever come back.

Twenty thousand years ago and he still looks the same.

Like he doesn’t care that Zayn is infected waste, garbage paper flower petals curling up against the walls of a haunted house.

 

 

He steps closer.

 

 

Barrel against his skull and then it isn’t. Cool metal slipping from Zayn’s palm, too heavy to hold onto, and it lands on the floor. It’s not hollow. It just thuds.

He’s sold everything. There’s nothing left but the wallpaper now.

Because, because, because…

 

 

“I have a car…”

 

 

Cool metal resting against the floor and Zayn’s hand is in the same position. He can’t move. His brain is frozen.

 

 

“… and a full tank of gas…”

 

 

Zayn doesn’t notice his hand is being lowered until he feels Liam’s fingers against his skin.

 

 

“I want you to come with me.”

 

Because, because, because…

Zayn never thought he was that special, but apparently to Liam he kind of was.

Because Liam shouldn’t ever forgive him, but he does anyways.

Because Zayn is that cat nobody ever wanted and Liam is that little boy who didn’t care.

Because, because, because...

 

 

Lips on his and Zayn doesn’t have his shoebox, but he promises to keep it safe


End file.
